Dell Venue Pro says, “Welcome to Windows Phone 7”

Windows Phone 7 is the newest version of the mobile smartphone operating system from the Redmond giants Microsoft. Their previous versions were widely regarded as primitive, non-user friendly and poorly optimized for (capacitive) touch displays. Seems like Microsoft have heard all the complaints and have come back with a remarkably fresh operating system. Lets dive into what’s new in WP7(that’s Windows Phone 7) and review the hardware features of the new Dell Venue Pro which comes with WP7.

First a few key features of the WP7 operating system

1. WP7 is available across a variety of manufacturers,carriers and form factors. But the catch is these phones must satisfy some minimum requirements so that it can be WP7 compatible. These requirements are

• Atleast 1Ghz application processor.
• 5MP camera with 720p video and a dedicated camera button(not sure about the last one)
• Capacitive Touch Screen display with a minimum diagonal measure of 3.5 inches.
• 8GB of internal storage.
• 256 MB of RAM
• 3 dedicated buttons- for search, menu and back.

2. WP7 features a whole-new refreshed UI called the Metro User Interface which must be very familiar for users of Zune.More on that in the user interface section.

3. WP7 organizes your information into hubs. For example, all your windows live, GMail,YahooMail and other e-mail accounts are presented as an unified hub called mail. It lists the number of unread mails in the top right hand corner. Other hubs include Microsoft Office Mobile, Music & Videos(handled by Zune software),Weather, People’s Hub(more on that in a minute), and hubs for your messages and calls.Some of these hubs present on the home screen of the phone are aptly called “LIVE TILES”

4. WP7 feature a mobile version of Internet Explorer(built on IE9) and has features found on most modern smartphone browsers-pinch to zoom, super smooth scrolling,decent page rendering and page load speeds. What it lacks is Silverlight and Flash support – which might be included in the upcoming Mango update.

5. The initial release of Wp7 didn’t include the copy-paste functionality which was later included in a later update(the first update for WP7 series).

6. XBOX live integration and integration with many more Windows features, like syncing with Microsoft’s cloud and so on.

Lets now dive into the Dell Venue Pro, including some of the software features not mentioned earlier, and some unique features distinguishing it from the other WP7 phones out there.

Hardware Design

(Venue Pro in hand)

The Dell venue pro is an unconventional QWERTY phone, which seems to break a few design norms. The screen is a 4 inch touchscreen WVGA display at a resolution of 480X800. The device is on the thicker side measuring at around 0.6 inches. This is largely due to the slide out QWERTY keyboard which adds to the overall length of the device as well as its weight which comes to around 180 grams. The QWERTY keyboard is pretty well laid out with the keys positioned for easy and fast typing, for people with moderate sized fingers.Large fingered people probably might struggle a bit though. One-handed use will probably put a strain on your wrists and thumb if you use the phone for typing out a long e-mail or a message. The design is definitely aimed at the business class and power users, and features a nice metallic finish at the back (with Dell’s logo). The overall design is pretty sturdy and the sliding mechanism seems to be quite top-notch.

(A comparison between some similar phones)

The screen is quite gorgeous and very responsive to touch. It would be a pleasure to use, but is probably a rung or two below Apple’s Retina display and Samsung’s SAMOLED and SAMOLED plus.

The device is powered by a 1Ghz snapdragon processor(yes it seems old, but the phone released a long while ago…I managed to use this phone only recently thanks to a kind showroom guy and the fact that I am living in India) and has 512 MB of RAM along with 1GB of ROM.

The QWERTY keyboard is definitely not the best out there, with the keys feeling a bit plasticky and tactile feedback being subtle. This keyboard, like all other mobile QWERTYs out there needs a little getting used to.

The Dell Venue Pro features a 3.5mm headset jack(it comes with a half decent pair of headphones) at the top, a microUSB port at the bottom for charging and syncing, and dual-stereo speakers. The speaker performance is quite good for mobile phone standards but I would definitely recommend listening to music using a headset.

There is a 5-Megapixel camera at the back with a little LED flash to assist low-light photography. The camera is capable of taking videos at a resolution of 720p and the LED flash can be used for capturing video too. The camera key is present on the right side of the phone which instantly opens the digital camera interface. Pressing the key will launch the camera even when the phone is locked(that’s a nice feature I like about WP7).Still photos as well as video turns out pretty decently on the phone.

Other than that it also has

• Connectivity through Wi-fi, HSDPA 7.2Mbps and Bluetooth 2.1
• Accelerometer and Proximity sensors.
• 1630mAh battery which should keep the phone running for a couple of days.

Metro UI- The new Windows Phone 7 User Interface

Microsoft has definitely put a lot of thought into its new Metro UI. So much so that it has prohibited the device manufacturers into providing custom ROMs for the UI(you know like HTC Sense UI or Samsung TouchWiz for Android). The new interface is definitely optimized for touch(and Oh boy are the fonts large).

The new homescreen contains the large live tiles such as the People’s hub, Phone hub, message Hub and so on, which represent a collection of some related information.Tapping on these tiles takes you to the corresponding app to view the detailed information.

Check out the video below for a quick walkthrough of the user interface

Well its on a Samsung phone but there is no difference in the experience on the Dell Venue Pro

To view the applications installed on your phone, tapping the little right arrow will list down an alphabetical ordering of the icons for those apps. This is a small gripe I have this UI because of the long(kinetic) scrolling involved in reaching apps which are at the bottom of the list.

(Now I need to scroll to reach yahoo Messenger )

The revolutionary UI can be seen in the Photos and Zune applications, where the content is laid out in a landscape fashion. There is one full column of content on the screen and little teaser portion of the next column, which you can side scroll to reveal.

Other significant aspects of the UI are

• Long press of a hub or icon lets you move it around or uninstall it.
• Only the most relevant and frequently used options are displayed for each app.
• Additional or contextual information about an app can be usually obtained by tapping on the ellipsis (…) that appears next to an option menu.
• When the screen is locked, the lock screen display has a custom wallpaper that can be set by the user.
• The lock screen display also displays any meetings you have coming up, missed calls and messages that you have received and other details like battery status and so on. All this information can be accessed without having to unlock your phone(which is done by a simple swipe of the homescreen).
• It supports multi-touch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and has accelerometer sensors to detected phone orientation.
• Hubs on the homescreen which are not live tiles will be set to one of 8 color presets available.
• The homescreen has a black background which cannot be changed.

Software Features

Software features of all WP7 phones are quite alike and I will list out a few of those which I have handled here.

(The new WP7 homescreen-isnt she gorgeous)

1. People’s Hub

The people’s hub is a great way to organize all the contacts you ever have into a single interface. All your phone contacts, Facebook friends and Twitter followers are integrated beautifully into a multi-functional interface. This hub will contain information that your friends may post on the corresponding social networks, like any new status updates, tweets, photos and so on.

The People’s hub is a live tile which will have flashing miniature updates of your friend’s activities.

2. Organizer

WP7 features a pretty good,crisp-looking organizer. The calendar’s multiple views look pretty stunning on this display and you can setup multiple reminders/meetings and son on in the organizer’s agenda. Currently syncing with Outlook is not possible but should be made available soon. There is also the option to setup multiple alarms which is quite a useful day-to-day feature.

3. XBOX Live

WP7 phones, and hence Dell Venue Pro included have native XBOX integration. You can import your XBOX Live Avatar and play specially marked XBOX live mobile games which earn gamer points for your profile. Though the number of premium gaming titles is still limited, it doesn’t seem far away that you can play COD on your mobile phone too

4. Microsoft Office Mobile:

I didn’t have much time exploring Office mobile, but the few minutes I had with it seriously underwhelmed me. Yes, the Metro UI for laying out this app is pretty cool, but the functionality of Office Mobile is nowhere near the many other Office applications out there, never mind with that of Office 2010.

(Office Metro UI Hub expanded)

It has the ability to create Word,PowerPoint (after an update),Excel and OneNote documents. Editing is made easy with the QWERTY physical keyboard(which allows for a large screen estate to be used for viewing the document), Even the touch keyboard is pretty nice and responsive to touch.Oh yeah copy-paste has been enabled via an update and can be used in Office mobile too.

(The on-screen keyboard in case you are too lazy to slide out the physical keyboard)

But within each document the number of formatting options are quite limited, for example the number of fonts available, font colors, highlighting colors and so on. But creating a basic document, as well as viewing documents created elsewhere is quite easy and largely hassle-free.

5. Phone and Messages

The Messages application organizes your messages into a threaded view much like other smartphones out there.Both the phone and messages interfaces are quite straightforward and adorned with large fonts, which make using them quite easy.

6. Zune = Media Player

Zune is the default media player application for the WP7 phones. It is a seriously gorgeous looking piece of software, which Windows users of ZUNE would already know. It has the same Metro UI side scrolling interface which displays Music, Videos and Pictures.

Music is sorted by Artists,Albums,Playlists,and so on and you can create your own playlist on-the-go. SmartDJ is also present which picks out a playlist for you to listen based on the current song playing.

All content playable by Zune needs to synced from your PC via the Zune software. Don’t worry all the necessary video formats conversion is done by Zune itself.

Watching videos on the Dell Venue Pro is pretty good and the full screen experience of HD videos is mind-blowing.

Photos taken from your phone as well as those that your friends upload to social networking sites will displayed under the Photos menu organized by category. Photos can be pinched-to-zoom and this is really smooth on the phone.

The Venue Pros camera does not have a geo-tagging option and neither does Zune classify photos based on location.

The beautiful thing about the Zune software is that when looking at photos, a montage of your photo collection will scroll across the background. Similarly when in Music, the Album art of all your albums will be strung into a smooth background slideshow. The rendering is pretty impressive and I could possibly look at this all day!

7. Zune Marketplace-Apps,Music and more…

The Zune marketplace is the official “app” store for WP7 devices. you can purchase or try out applications for your phone, as well as buy albums, rent movies and many more. The marketplace is organized based on category as well as “top-selling/recommended”. Last time I checked there were around 6000 apps along with a large collection TV shows,movies and songs to download. I can only imagine this marketplace to really accelerate in growth with Microsoft pumping in more and more money into its infrastructure.

(Zune marketplace- and Metro UI expanded – A concept)

One strange thing however is that when searching for an app, Zune also lists songs and other media which are relevant to the search keyword. Feels like Microsoft needs to look at that a bit too.

8. Internet Explorer Mobile

I could only browse through a couple of sites on IE mobile(again due to the limited Wi-Fi in that store), but the site rendering looks pretty decent. It seems like this could be one of the best mobile browsers out there, with a competitive JavaScript performance, tabbed browsing and a easy to learn interface.

(IE Mobile displaying Engadget Website)

It supports bookmarks as well as double tap to zoom(along with pinch-to-zoom of course).Oddly enough it prefers to load the mobile version of the sites I want rather than the full desktop-versions. Guess it could be because of the stupid net connection I had access to. But overall I am really impressed with browser and hope that Microsoft updates it to enable Flash and Silverlight.

Final Remarks:

Windows Phone 7 seems to mean business. It is trying to capture the attention of users who are playing with their iPhones or droids and wants them to consider WP7 as a serious alternative.

As one of the first WP7 phones to be launched the Dell Venue Pro is a flag-ship device. It does seem a bit underpowered compared to the new dual-core processor powered phones, but take it from its no slouch.It was a butter smooth experience to use it, and definitely a recommended device if you do a lot of e-mail or word processing while on-the-go.

The main drawbacks of this device are that the OS still feels a bit crippled in functionality compared to both iOS as well as Android. Moreover the Venue Pro seems to differ from its other Wp7 cousins only by its QWERTY keyboard. Physical keyboard aside there is no compelling reason to buy this WP7 device over others such as the HTC HD7, LG Optimus or Samsung Omnia. It seems a bit too pricey for me, the kind showroom guy quotes it at INR 28000, which after 5 months of being available in the market seems too steep.(At which point I had to thank him and leave).

So if you are one to try out new devices, and don’t mind a few experiments here and there, then the Dell Venue Pro is definitely for you. Otherwise I would recommend you wait and watch until the second generation of WP7 phones come out.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood(PC) Game Review

The wait for Assassins creed brotherhood has been terribly long for PC gamers, almost 5 months, but once the game hit the shelves (or the net) it was a runaway success. Yes I have finished the game, including most of the side missions and I am going to give an honest review about it.

The game’s opening sequence sends chills across the backbone of players who had finished the previous game “Assassins Creed II” , for others who just joined the franchise, it basically fills them in on the crazy events happening in the world of Assassins and Templars. The gameplay is poetry in motion and every action is executed fluidly, and the visuals are simply breathtaking to say the least. Even on a moderate build you can be assured of a visual treat.

The game actually needs no introduction but here is a brief one : It is a action adventure set in the year 2012, where you, Desmond Miles , an assassin, team up with fellow assassins to foil the evil schemes of the templars and the evil corporation Abstergo. Sounds simple? No. You travel across time, not in a time-machine but in your DNA, through a machine called an animus to reveal ancient secrets of your ancestors (who btw are also assassins and fought against the templars).

The main criticism of the previous games was that you didn’t get to do much as Desmond Miles. In this game too, Desmond gets limited game time, but gets to do some pretty cool stuff in that period (To find out play the game )

(Hey I am Desmond and this is Lucy)

 

In this game, just like the previous one, you relive the memories of Ezio Auditore di Firenze, the charming ladies man turned vicious assassin. In the last game you were looking to seek revenge for your family’s unjust hanging, whereas in this game Ezio has become more wise and is looking to rebuild the Assassins Order as its new mentor(mentore in Italian ).

The protagonist is Cesare Borgia, the son of the pope and the villain of the previous game Rodrigo Borgia. He is assisted by his evil and slightly disturbed sister Lucrezia. Their relationship in the game is questionable to say the least..

(Dude you don’t do that to your sister)

The game begins as you arrive to a hero’s welcome to Monteriggioni, to your uncle’s villa, which is attacked before you can even settle in to a comfortable bath. With Mario (Ezio’s uncle) killed and Ezio wounded, he fights off the remaining attackers and leads his mother and sister to safety. From here on the story takes its usual course, with the main storyline pushing you towards building the Assassins order as well as trying to kill Cesare Borgia and rid Rome of the Borgia’s influence. Once the Ezio’s story is complete the game leads Desmond to an unexpected climax, with a twist that will probably knock your socks off.

The gameplay mechanics are pretty similar to the previous games, with a few changes mostly for the better. You will encounter a lot of characters you have met in the past, with the addition of a few interesting new ones. The AI of the crowd has also been sharpened a bit (in case of rogue NPCs a little too much- you might encounter too many distractions in beggars, thieves and so on).Try to listen in on the crowd chatter if possible, some of them are downright funny .There is also a Multiplayer Mode in the game but I couldn’t explore it due to certain economic reasons. Speaking of economy, the game’s economy system has also been spruced up with the inclusion of popular landmarks which you can buy. Just like the last game you need to earn florins and spend it in renovating parts of Rome which in turn will generate a regular income. Tailors, art merchants, doctors, blacksmiths,stables, tunnels and so on need to be renovated for you to access some cool collectibles. Tunnels provide a quick transport mechanism. So do horses; unlike the previous games, in Brotherhood you can use horses to travel across Rome and for the most part you would have to. You can also summon a horse by a tap of the Eagle Vision key.

Free running and platforming in Brotherhood are pretty much at the same excellent levels they were in the previous games. You can run across rooftops, swim across lakes jump from towers and many more.

In this game you also control 3 factions: courtesans, thieves and mercenaries. You can hire and use them just like the last game, but in addition you can also buy buildings and place factions there.

(The thieves, the mercenaries and the courtesans…at La Volpe’s Inn)

Ezio also gets to meet his old friend Leonardo Da Vinci.

(What’s with the beard dude…)

Leo now is forced to work for the Borgia against his will, and has designed some seriously destructive (but uber cool) medieval war machines for them. You can take up missions which involve finding out the location of such war machines and destroying them. There are 6 such missions and they are definitely the coolest in the game. They add the much needed BOOM factor to the game.

(KABOOM!!!!!!)

Another familiar mission category is the “Lairs of Romulus” , which is similar to the “Assassins Tombs” of the previous game. They provide a challenging platforming experience, and some of the timed missions are pretty fun. Of course , the platforming aspect of the game is pretty smooth and fluid. Some of the lairs include combat, where you need to fight with some foolishly clad people called the followers of Romulus. before you can gain access to the “secret within” (actually it is a scroll and a key…collect 6 of these and you get access to the Romulus Treasure).

 

(This guy is a fashion disaster)

There are also 10 glyphs hidden across Rome in special landmarks, left behind by the mysterious subject 16 . Decoding these with Eagle Vision will give you access to a part of the TRUTH video. Decoding all 10 will let you watch the entire truth video. Decoding the puzzles is not quite easy however.If you want to watch the entire TRUTH video I recommend you either refer to some online Walkthrough, or have loads of patience to solve the riddles.

(One of the easier puzzle)

Combat has also undergone some nice fine tuning. Most of the new tweaks help you polish off your enemies in style. Some such changes are:

1. Horse to horse assassination- pretty cool and looks good when pulled off successfully.
2. Killstreak: This makes Ezio a deadly assassin (if you didn’t think he was one earlier). Kill one soldier, and before he falls to the ground point to another one nearby and tap the attack button-in one fell swoop the guy who you pointed to is dead. You can chain up huge kill streaks in a similar manner. The best thing about them is the cinematic killing of each of the Borgia soldiers.(gave me some cruel satisfaction seeing their heads taken off in a number of ways).
3. Couple of new weapons are also added to Ezio’s armory. One is the long awaited Crossbow, which is essentially a gun, but doesn’t make noise. Another is the poison darts which can be thrown at nearby enemies. You need to buy them however with your well-earned florins.
4. Borgia Towers: This is a nice bit of addition to AC. Like towers which you climb to synchronize and perform leaps of faith, there are some Borgia controlled sections of Rome which are watched over by Borgia towers. Basically each tower has a captain or a chief guard, who is to be assassinated by Ezio, and then that Borgia tower needs to be burnt up to free that section of the city of their influence. This offers a small change in pace to the monotonous climbing of viewpoints, which I found was a pretty nice addition.

Calling your fellow assassins to do your dirty work

Now this aspect is truly one of the most undercooked aspect of the game. Ezio can recruit assassins to the Assassins guild by rescuing citizens who are being harassed by the guards (much like in AC1). Once you rescue them they’ll join your crew of merry assassins. You can then assign these apprentices to go work on some assassination missions or even call them to help you in a fight(I just did that a couple of time ‘coz the way they jump from the sky is pretty cool to see). These recruits gain experience points and you can assign them skill points to improve their armor,weapons and so on. These recruits can die in a fight so be sure of sending them to a fight lest you be one man(or woman) down.

 

There are both pros and cons to this mechanic : the good thing is that Ezio is being established as a leader, as a guiding spirit of the Assassins Clan. However these recruits don’t seem to be part of any bigger plan of the game…at least in Brotherhood they don’t.

I did feel that with these additions combat became a little easier.Nevertheless it was a lot more enjoyable, some large-scale battles particularly were quite memorable.

Overall this game is another amazing release in an epic series of the Assassin Creed franchise. Even if you have beaten the main storyline (takes around 7-8 hours) you will still have another 12-15 hours of solid and enjoyable gameplay time. The game can be played merely for its art direction and the intricate portrayal of the beauty of Rome. Or maybe if you like to kill hoards of virtual bad guys for no good reason, you’ll simply fall in love with this game. Couple of grouses I have with this game are certain contrived additions like the Assassins Guild (maybe there is some more role for them in the next game?) and recycled music(seriously why did Ubisoft use the same music as AC2). Yes there were game glitches here and there, like floating bodies, disappearing weapons, but they don’t deter the player from the game.

So overall I would give the following scores

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

(SOLID)

DIFFICULTY: 7/10

(A BIT TOO EASY FOR SEASONED AC PLAYERS)

VISUAL APPEAL: 9.5/10

(0.5 TAKEN OFF FOR THOSE GLITCHES,OTHERWISE A SPECTACLE)

MUSIC AND AMBIENCE: 8.5/10

(MUSIC IS SO AC2)

AI: 9/10

(THE ROMAN CROWD IS PRETTY REALISTIC)

FUN: 10/10

(WHO DOESN’T LIKE PLAYING AC?)

OVERALL: 9/10

(A PRETTY GREAT GAME…GO PLAY IT NOW!)

 

P.S: I’ll try to come up with a video of my gameplay if possible…

The little Green Robot

Seems like all the news around the tech world is about Google these days…more so about Android. That’s because they are going to release their next iteration of Android- codenamed Honeycomb (v 3.0 I think).

The headline going around is that Honeycomb is developed with the tablet form factor in mind. Obviously that means they have been pushed by people’s sudden spurt of interest in buying these as well as nudges from the hardware manufacturers to develop a tablet-optimized OS.

In Google’s own words this is definitely the next generation of Android is completely different. First of the striking feature is that the UI looks very muted and out of your way. The lock screen is a little circle in which you need to slide your finger from left to right. The home screen appears immediately and seems to have an odd 3-D kind of look to it. At the bottom of the screen reside 3 large control icons, which would eliminate the need for external buttons. These include the back,home and select button (in that order). The main screen estate is occupied by a set of shortcuts to applications as well as some new and improved Google widgets. The widgets are more powerful due to two main reasons- (1) more space and hence could display more useful information (2) more processing power so they seem to be snappy. Case in point is the GMail widget which displays unread messages from your GMail inbox. You can also scroll through this list. Another neat widget is the browser bookmarks which is again scrollable. So is the calendar widget which display your upcoming appointments from Google Calendar as well.

Honeycomb also supports multiple homescreens which are side-scrollable. Each of the homescreens can support multiple apps (just like any other Android presently in the market). Again there is a top-view of all the homescreens which you can access by a touch gesture or by hitting the home icon.Widgets can be moved between screens as well.To add widgets you need to tap on the little “plus” icon at the right top. And of course there is the Google Search toolbar at the top of every homescreen as well as the Voice Search/Control icon near it.

Couple of key updates from Google’s side in Honeycomb is the new GMail app and the new Chrome-like browser. The GMail application has been redesigned to use the entire screen space. Tap on the GMail icon and you are displayed with your inbox. The mail headers on the left and the content on the right. The browser as mentioned earlier is Google Chrome’s little brother. It has the familiar looking interface,supports flash,has multiple tab support and also has the option of syncing bookmarks from your desktop Chrome browser.

Another redesign would be in the Youtube application. This application has an awesome concave looking arrangement of videos, again looking a bit 3-D. All this 3-D influence maybe comes from the team at bumptop which Google acquired recently (www.bumptop.com). Google maps also has been optimized for tablets with cooler rendering of the map, like the building popping out (3-D again) in the map. The map’s perspective and zoom level can be altered using multi-touch gestures.

This version of Android also support native multi-tasking. From the home screen clicking on the task switcher icon displays a list of recently used(i.e running) apps. You can simply switch to any of those apps and resume from where you left off. Background processes like a download or maybe twitter apps would still be running in the background whereas other user-interaction required apps like games would be frozen at the time of switching. A more personal note here : With Google releasing new SDKs for gaming and direct hardware manipulation I feel Android tablet gaming would go very far, especially to casual gamers. This is mainly because of the large multi-touch enabled capacitive screen, ideal for RPGs.It also has an e-book application which syncs with the Google Books site and hence providing a good e-reading experience as well.

Android 3.0 has been optimized for tablets but that does not mean it wont come to smart phones. Couple of smart phone related apps are the customized Google talk application which is the IM client with built in video chat. There is also a notification pane. not very unlike that found in Android phones these days.

The OS has been upgraded so that it can playback 1080p videos as well. However the hardware would probably decide on that.

As of now the OS has been introduced with Motorola’s Xoom tablet with other manufacturers queueing up to release their own honeycomb tablet. The demo of the OS using Moto Xoom seemed very impressive with the OS being really attractive and snappy. One cant really say if that’s because of the OS optimizations or because of the cool specs of the Xoom.

[Moto Xoom]

 

The feature specs released by Motorola is quite mouth watering too.The tablet boasts a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a 10.1 inch capacitive touch screen which supports a 1280 x 800 resolution , a 5.0 MP rear-facing camera with 4x Digital Zoom and Auto Focus, 720p video recording and 1080p video playback, 32 GB of storage, 802.11 n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. If you’re into sizes, you should know that Motorola Xoom is a 249.1 mm x 167.8 mm x 12.9 mm tablet, weighing 730 g. Xoom will be able to last for up to 10 hours of video playback! That’s an impressive battery life.

Check out the video below to see the demo of Honeycomb tablet made at CES earlier this week.

Why call it Chrome?

Quite recently Google released a netbook. Apparently they built it too! But what is more significant than the hardware (which quite frankly looks like a black-and-black movie) is that it runs the first release quality build of the Chrome OS.

The Chrome OS is a long running effort of Google to bring a new “Operating System” dedicated for netbooks. However it can be equally described as a really large framework for only webapps to run on a computer. Not that its a bad thing , but most people would not be convinced to buy a $500 netbook to find out that they cannot even store their entire movie collection in it!

The last point is more a critique of the Cr-48 netbook(that is its name!!). Clearly the Chrome netbook is for developers so it may not exactly be top-of-the-line with respect to the hardware specs. Anyway the significant hardware details are:

• 12.1-inch screen.
• Full size keyboard.
• Oversized clickpad.
• 3G chip
• 802.11n dual-band WiFi.
• 8+ hours of active use.
• 8+ days of standby.
• Webcam.
• 16GB Solid state drive
• Intel Pine Trail processor(do not know about the clock speed)
• 1GB of RAM

The hardware is pretty basic looking except for the keyboard. The keyboard is pretty awesome to look at(which is all I can do). The interesting thing about the keyboard is that is has got a Search Key(which brings up the new tab page) and a full screen key which switches the current tab(or application) to full screen.

Now that the hardware is dusted off let us look at the OS.

(Welcome to CHROME OS)

Usually with Google they usually release a good product, build on it in increments and make it a really great one (think Android,GMail,Search). But with Chrome OS they are trying to revolutionize people’s idea about what a netbook is. This OS is strictly a web-only OS in the sense that you cannot even login to your system unless you are connected to the internet. In the first boot of the device Chrome asks you for your preferred wi-fi network (unless of course you are hooked up via ethernet). Otherwise it will try to operate on the data plan from the 3G chip(clearly a no-no in India. No wonder you cant buy one from here). Then in about 3 seconds you would need to login to your Google account, or create one if you dont have an account (!). Then in another 10 seconds all your Google data would be pulled in and lo you are presented to your desktop.

Only problem is that there is no desktop. Its just a Chrome browser window that just wont minimize.You are presented with large icons which are basically shortcuts to web applications like GMail, Google Talk, Google Docs , Youtube and so on. There is no “My Computer” or “My Documents” and the “old” stuff like that. People who are used to installing games and applications on their PC would just have to live with the Chrome extensions as of now. Google promises that there will be a large collection of applications in the future.

The entire OS is linux-based but the only revealing detail is the GNOME file browser which pops up whenever you want to save a document from your mail.  But the problem with the file manager is that when you use a pen drive or memory card you cannot backup its contents to the local storage (i.e the file manager does not show up). Instead you can only sync it online with some online storage sties.Similarly you can just play your songs from an external device, you cannot save them to the hard disk. (maybe to discourage that Cr-48 has only 16GB SSD).

Again other linux-specific features are completely hidden. Like the terminal,access to the root folder and so on. Clearly this netbook is for those users who are always on the move and are net-centered.

But the platform also has its upside. For example since all the work you do is cloud based, the documents you are working on(on Google docs) or the pictures you are editing (on PIKNIK) are always saved in the cloud. So incase you need to switch to another computer or if your netbook gets lost you really lose no data. Another cool feature is that you can ompletely replicate you Chrome OS experience on another machine. You need to enable a sync feature (from options->settings) on the Chrome OS. Once you are on another machine (which is running the Google Chrome Web Browser) all you need to do is sync back by signing into your account and lo all your bookmarks and applications are available.

Speaking of applications, all of the available apps are obviously web-apps. You need to install a specific app to suit your needs. For that you could do a Google Search (duh!) or use the Chrome Web Store.Clicking on the Web store shortcut takes you to a very Anroid Market like site from which you can install applications that are necessary.These apps can be placed in the bookmarks section, so that they will be automatically synced to your Google Account.So if you want to play a song or a movie you would have to use the in-built basic player or use one of the apps available.

(Chrome Web-Store from my laptop: https://chrome.google.com/webstore)

But the major problems with the platform is its overall performance. While it blazes away in most places the problems come when viewing flash heavy sites. The initial beta which I used couldnt play online flash videos and the recently released netbook flash seems really sluggish. Also there isnt a way to print out the documents you have created without using Google’s Air Print service(which is still in beta).

(Here is a youtube video about the basics of the OS)

This OS is like a kick to the traditional idea about OPERATING SYSTEMS.Overall the concept seems really innovative and we might have to wait and watch to see what happens.All the gripes about the OS are due to its heavy dependency on the cloud. But hey, if Google thinks its the way to go I guess they have a reason. Hopefully they will come up with more solutions than problems in the future.

(OH yeah please do remain calm)

A More beautiful web? Internet Explorer 9

Just a few weeks for the Internet Explorer 9 to go public. As of now it is the test drive version that people are working with. Well it should give a fairly accurate representation of how the final product would be, right?!

First the bullet points

• IE9 obviously is the 9th iteration in Microsoft’s proprietary internet browser for the Windows platform.
• IE9 requires Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 or Windows 7…sorry XP users you are stuck with IE8
• IE9 supposedly is a huge step from Microsoft to move towards W3 web standards (more on that later)
• It is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Now to my opinion of IE9. IE9 sure looks like a complete overhaul of the series. (looks like Microsoft are doing a lot of overhauling these days). The browser window looks very different from any of the previous versions. The first striking aspect is the address box and the tab listing appear in one single line.

Oh wait its called the “One Box” not the address box any more because you can also simply search for keywords by typing there. The search provider will be retained from your previous version of internet explorer. However the “one Box” is kind of strange. if your keyword is quite short or related to a famous brand instead of showing search results IE9 directly takes you to a related site of that keyword. Sometimes it would just display the matching search terms (aka what I would’ve expected). Its difficult for me to predict what sort of an algorithm is being used here and it is difficult to assess whether it would make the user’s browsing experience simpler.

(On entering the search keyword microsoft-Chrome vs IE9)

IE9 would retain your previous IE’s configurations such as home pages , favorites and so on. But the “about:tabs” page has been modified to look similar to that of the WebKit browser’s. The page contains tiles of the pages you have visited recently along with information on how often you have visited it. But the tiles are a bit disappointing as it simply has a logo of the webpage in the corner instead of the webpage’s thumbnail.

Other significant UI changes are quite subtle. Maybe the large back button would be the only one that sticks out. Microsoft claims that IE9 is aimed at making the user concentrate on the web content rather than the browser itself. There are icons on the right of the browser to perform your regular tasks and configure certain settings.(not very different from Google Chrome or Safari).

The new download manager seems to more subdued as it is present meekly at the bottom of the screen.

More significantly there has been lots of effort put under the hood to make the browser compete with the others in terms of a web standards aspect. For eg., IE9 now supports HTML5 encoding natively without having to install Chrome frame. It also passes the Acid3 test with flying colors. It has a score of 95/100 which significantly is more than the Acid3 scores of IE6 IE& and IE8 put together. It has a faster Java script engine which means that web developers need not include specific IE optimization code into their websites. Almost all web pages are rendered almost perfectly. (Check out the sample provided at IE9’s webpage). The compatibility view option of IE8 seems to be bought under the hood in IE9. Users no longer have to think about any badly rendered sites due to incompatibility.IE9 also has better tab management-it is much easier and fun to re-arrange tabs. New tabs open pretty quickly and the eye-candy of breakaway tabs is also present(Chrome-like).

(IE9 supports HTML5 yay!)

IE9 also plays good with the other Microsoft software you might be running on your PC  like Messenger, Outlook and so on(say for example it highlights recent activities of your Messenger friends on a particular site) . It also retains many of the important features of previous editions of IE like the In-Private browsing, pressing ALT to bring down “advanced” menus and so on.

(Windows 7 taskbar shortcut context menu)

It is quite obvious that IE9 is built with Windows 7 in mind. Like IE8 you can pin a shortcut of IE9 onto your Windows 7 task bar. Right clicking or swiping up on this shortcut would provide you with a Windows 7 context menu for IE9 like frequent sites,tasks and so on.There is this pretty neat option of pinning one of those thumbnails in the New Tab page onto your Start Menu. It seems to be a pretty good idea as users can quickly go to one of their favorite pages without opening up the browser. You could pin a torrent site to the start menu and immediately go to it with a single click.

And there comes a little snag in IE9. It could be because it is a pre-release version but I seem to have problems in downloading .torrent files. I didn’t have any such problem with IE8 or even other browsers like Firefox or Chrome. Also there is no status bar as such for the browser. Sometimes it is hard to notice whether a link I just clicked on is loading or not. Of course there is the occasional crash happening but this pre-release version seems to be more stable and usable than the previous full releases.

(WTH?)

This is probably the best version of IE yet and it seems that Microsoft has woken up to the browser battle after a long hibernation. Seems like they need Google or Apple to be at their heels all the time.’

Oh yeah the IE9 icon seems to have the lightest shade of blue yet. (Maybe because IE9 is the lightest IE out there??)

Download IE9 platform preview from here http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/downloads/Default.html

In case you don’t like it you can simply uninstall it from CONTROL PANEL and you would be reverted back to the default Internet Explorer for you OS.

Installing an OS from a pen drive

Well I have only installed two operating systems ever- Windows 7 and Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Installing a new operating system used to be an ordeal in the primitive times of CLI(Command line interface)…or so I have heard. But there should not be much trouble in installing the ones I had mentioned. Not much trouble provided that the installation medium is in working condition.

It is common knowledge that most of us (students at least) use only a pirated version of Windows, due to the inexorbitant rates of “Genuine Windows Software”. Also the linux distros are usually available free of cost in a .iso format for download from the internet. Hence if one wants to install a new OS (assuming it is one of these two) we would probably download a copy burn it to a CD/DVD and proceed from the optical disk. However what is most frustrating is that the optical disks are prone to getting scratched and hence we might be faced with the disaster of an installation falling flat midway through.

The easiest solution is to use a pen drive that is becoming so common these days. I’ll list out the steps for creating an installation medium in the form of a USB drive for both Windows and Ubuntu.

Note: It is advised that the pen drive used should have atleast 2GB free space in case of a Ubuntu installation and 4Gb for a Windows installation. (Also preferrable if it’s a completely new/formatted pen drive)

Although you can still use the remaining free space in the pen drive for your purpose it is best if you don’t. In case the pen drive is absolutely necessary just install the OS and format the pen drive later.

(1) Installing Windows (Vista and 7 only)

Method 1

1. Plug in your pen drive and format it if it has not been formatted already
2. Open command prompt as Administrator. i.e type cmd in the windows start menu search bar and right click on the first matching program->Run as Administrator->Continue
3. In the command prompt windows type DISKPART
4. Once the prompt changes to DISKPART> type in LIST DISK and try to identify your pen drive from the listed devices.

5. Assuming your disk is say Disk 1 proceed with the following commands

(In case you have not formatted before do the first 6 commands)

SELECT DISK 1

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS

6. Once the formatting is complete type these two commands.

ASSIGN

EXIT

Now you’ll be back to your default prompt

7. Now the actual job. Insert the Windows DVD into the DVD drive. Now in case you have only an ISO file don’t panic. Use a virtual drive manager program like POWER ISO or DAEMON Tools and mount the ISO file. (Should be pretty straight forward Open Power ISO –> Virtual Disk Manager->Mount Image-> Browse to your iso file and similarly for Daemon tools)

Note down the drive letter of the DVD/the mounted ISO file. Lets assume its G:\

Note down the drive letter of the pen drive too (Lets assume its H:\)

8. Now two more commands

G: CD BOOT

CD BOOT

(basically you are changing the current working directory to G:\BOOT)

9 . Now to prep your pen drive you need to make sure the BOOTMGR of Windows is hardcoded onto the pen drive so that the BIOS will recognize it as a boot-up disk . For that type

BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H:

10. Once all the above steps are completed simply copy all the contents from the cd to the pen drive.

(You can use the GUI for this….or simply use the COPY command in the CMD)

11. Done.You can now simply plug in the pen drive to the system where you would like to install the OS and boot it up. Make sure that the boot priority in the BIOS is USB. (Usually the USB drive will be checked before the hard disk so I guess for most motherboards there is no need to change anything)

And lo the installation will begin from where you can simply follow the GUI.

In case there seems to be any problem try repeating the steps all over.

NOTE: Why doesn’t this work on XP, coz in XP CMD the Pen drive doesn’t get detected and any hardcoding on the pendrive is not possible

Method 2

• In this method you can simply use a tool from the Microsoft Store. I have not had much success with this when I tried with a pirated ISO file but the tool sure worked when I tried with the Windows 7 Beta ISO file I got a while ago.

1. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and install it.



2. Run the program, browse to your Windows 7 ISO image using the Browse button.



3. In this step, you need to select your media type. As we are here to create a bootable USB, simply click on USB device button.



4. Select your USB flash drive from the drop down box and click on Begin copying button.



5. The Windows 7 USB/DVD tool will take a few minutes to complete the procedure.

And that’s its.

(2) Installing Ubuntu:

The GUI method is so good that I have never even tried any other method. Creating a USB startup disk using this tool is really simple and easy.

Make sure you have a pen drive with atleast 2 GB of space and of course the Ubuntu ISO file.

(In Windows)

• If you are using windows and would want to create a USB startup disk for Ubuntu Download the Universal USB Installer.
• Run the tool and accept any terms and conditions.
• From the drop down list select the version of Ubuntu you have and would like to install.

• Browse the ISO file in your file system

• Choose the drive letter of your pen drive from the drop down list.

• Now you can either choose the pen drive to be persistent or not.

Persistence means that in case you use this pen drive simply as a “live cd” whatever changes you made in a session would be save as an image in your pen drive. So you need not have “fresh live sessions” every time you use this pen drive as a “live cd”

• Click on Create and let the tool do its magic.
• Once done you can use this pen drive to install Ubuntu on any machine.

(In Ubuntu)

• In most of the recent Ubuntu distros there is an inbuilt tool called Startup Disk Creator

• In the main menu, go to System > Administration and open ‘Startup Disk Creator’
• Click ‘Other’ to choose the downloaded ISO file

• Locate the ISO file in your Ubuntu File system
• Select the USB stick in the bottom box and click ‘Make Startup Disk’

• Wait for the process to finish and you have got your bootable pen drive.

OTHER REASONS FOR USING A USB INTALLER:

Besides being a more secure and convenient device there are few more reasons for having a pen drive as an installation device :

• Faster installation : This is because flash devices have greater read speeds than optical disks and so your task will only go ahead that much faster.
• Reuse of medium : This is quite a generic reason. You can use the pen drive in which you have your windows or linux installer to store other stuff you might have. (I however do not recommend it).
• Its just cooler isnt it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello world!

Well…hello world indeed. My name is Arvind Krishnaa J. At the time of this blog I am doing my pre-final year in Computer Science and “Engineering” in SSN College of Engineering, Chennai. I see myself as a hypocrite because I always thought blogging was a thing of the 2000’s and in the new decade people just dont care about blogs. This is not my first attempt at blogging though. I tried once when I was twelve but didnt know what to write about. Again I tried when i was 15 (I dont even remember the URLs of those blogs…although i could use some methods to retrieve them). I even started one a couple of years ago but it fell flat. So fourth time lucky..i dunno. This might again be a dropped endeavor (or maybe not).

Basically why i am starting this blog is to let my opinions run wild (even though i am not much of a runner). If i come around i would probably write some reviews of stuff i use or spend some time around (i.e gadgets and games). It might not be a professional write-up but the readers must know that it would be from a guy like them.

Besides this article i dont think i would post anything about me though. I think a person’s opinions stand in better stead than the person themselves. So i guess this blog would be not very much different from the millions of others in the “blogosphere”. However i sincerely hope that this blog doesnt become a waste of time to the readers (and hopefully the writer too)

AKJ

(Those are my initials btw)